Hired Guns Creative - 45 North Vineyard & Winery Lineup

" For the design of 45 North Vineyard & Winery’s new lineup of canned ciders, we used insight into their target audience to develop a concept that would resonate: we decided to approach the labels as if they were show posters for headlining acts at the same music festival. This approach would yield highly individualized products, a brand architecture more common in the world of craft beer; our experience in this market let us move forward with confidence that the lineup would hold together as a family.

With this in mind, we developed a minimal design frame, leaving room for top-to-bottom illustration interacting with large custom typography. We focused on creating fun, playful artwork, all designed to flavour, representing the style of cider either metaphorically or abstractly.

45 RPM Semi-Sweet Cider illustrates a tree trunk made into a turntable, its rings playing like a record’s grooves, with vintage vinyl typography.

Oakayzie Barrel-Aged Cider features a beautiful iconic butterfly emerging from an oak barrel, its wings patterned with lunar phases in an echo of its theme, the passage of time.

Fresh Coast Dry Cider shows off the relaxing landscape of Michigan’s middle coast, with a skywriter above the lake writing in a beautiful brush cursive.

Singletrack Citra-hopped Cider features a night sky illuminated by the Aurora Borealis, with lights taking the shapes of hops and a bicycle cutting its path along the rising letters of an elegant script."